What are the differences between the advantages or disadvantages of OpenGL and GDI+?
ASAIK, OpenGL is much faster but more low-level and the use of it has a higher difficulty. Do all of the operating systems supported by Xojo have OpenGL built-in? Would it be good to use OpenGL to render graphics in a business app with customers that do not do gaming. So that may not have installed DirectX already. I know I am talking about OpenGL here but I am using DirectX as an example because I believe that most PC gamers will have installed DirectX for gaming.
To summarise what I am asking, is it practical to use OpenGL for drawing graphics instead of Qaurtz, GDI+ and whatever the Linux equivalent is (GTK?)?
OpenGL applications that are compiled with Xojo runs on all the platforms (e.g. Windows, OS X and Linux 32-bit (or Linux 64-bit with 32-bit compatible libraries).
In my opinion you should only use OpenGL if you need high speed graphics performance, or are planning to develop 3D applications. In my experience most business applications won’t require OpenGL, and you’re probably better off to stick with GDI+.
You also need to take maintainability into account. With that I imply that you should always strive to have your code written in such a way that it is easy to understand by fellow developers. Since OpenGL will increase the complexity of your project, it is probably best to use it only if you really need it.
DirectX only runs on Windows. The biggest reason why I use Xojo (or OpenGL for that matter) is so that I can deploy my applications to all platforms. Code is really much more valuable if it can run on all platforms.
Only if you really need high performance, or are writing 3D graphics applications IMO.
If you want to get a jump start with OpenGL, check out these open source projects. Currently I’m busy adding support for 3DMF files.
Thankyou for your opinion. Sorry for my bad explanation. What I mean by whay I said about DirectX is that I may not want people having to install OpenGL. I was just using DirectX ad an example because I believe to play most Windows games you need DirectX installed. I wad not curious to use DirectX, as in my opinion it is better than DirectX and as far as I know Xojo does support DirectX.
Thanks again